PdC Parts Fest 2018: Neck bracket with 4 bars

At Paredes de Coura (PdC) Fan Weekend in Portugal in June 2018, New Elementary ran a workshop where 25 builders were given 11 of the new LEGO® parts released in 2018 to experiment with. With the clock running, they used these in combination with general part stock (provided from the magnificent collection of Comunidade 0937) to create as many ideas, tablescraps, techniques and small MOCs as they could and we’re sharing the most interesting and useful ones with you.

Today we look at a very unusual new part; a new neck bracket for minifigures that comes in Black (Element ID 6215458 | Design ID 36452) which BrickLink call 'Minifig, Neck Bracket with 4 Angled Handles' and TLG 'Mini Back Plate,W/3,2 Shaft'.

Here are three of them attached together with two straight droid arms (Design ID 59230). The shape from which the bar connectors project is roughly pentagonal, but sadly not perfectly. However there's a reason for this, and it's to do with the System.

The two bars closest to the neck connector are at 90°. This gives you two (very) stable points of connection to attach the piece to System.

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Arranging two of them facing one another (this time using four bent droid arms, Design ID 30377) with the neck connectors facing downwards creates a very satisfying cage-like shape. Note the neck bracket holes sit on the studs of two jumper plates; more on that in a moment.

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This drone is a great use for the four bar connectors.

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The four bars lend themselves well for attaching legs, leaving the hole (where the piece attaches to the minifigure's neck) to create some sort of head. Like this lumbering all-terrain robot reindeer (I think). For Santa's trickier deliveries perhaps?

Here are some more quadrupeds.

You may have noted that unlike the cage around the tree shown earlier, none of these quadruped models  connect a regular stud into the minifigure neck hole.

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That's because unlike early minifigure neck bracket pieces, the hole is too loose to fit; there's no clutch at all. This is no doubt deliberate; LEGO don't tend to like atypical connection methods.  They're not in the System!

READ MORE: See models that use the Nexo bot torso piece

You can see in the above tablescrap that the builder used the Nexo bot torso piece (Design ID 24078) with the neck bracket, jamming its neck connection illegally into the base of a brick to hold the neck bracket. As if the neck bracket didn't already have enough 3.18mm bar connections on it, combining it with this torso adds another four! – an area ripe for further exploration.

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The jaunty angles of those four bars are heightened here by attaching 'sails' at rotated angles.

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To finish, a range of microscale weapons using the neck bracket as well as other parts from the workshop, which you will see more of soon!

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At time of writing this piece is found only in the following LEGO Super Heroes Avengers Infinity War sets, on the minifigures indicated.

• 76101 Outrider Dropship Attack – Outrider x 2
• 76103 Corvus Glaive Thresher Attack – Outrider
• 76104 The Hulkbuster Smash-Up – Outrider
• 76107 Thanos: Ultimate Battle – Iron Man
• 76108 The Sanctum Sanctorum Showdown – Iron Spider-Man

READ MORE: More results from the workshop, using the 1x2 rounded plate

Our thanks to Comunidade 0937 for providing the brick stock and the assistants, to PdC Fan Weekend for the opportunity, to The LEGO Group for providing the new parts, to Andrew Tipping for the fantastic photography and to Sven Franic for his excellent introductory presentation. Most of all, thanks to the builders!

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Products mentioned in this post were kindly supplied by the LEGO Group. All content represents the opinions of New Elementary authors and not the LEGO Group. All text and images are © New Elementary unless otherwise attributed. Photography by Andrew Tipping.